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Binary Driver Blobs Aren't Yet Ready For Wayland

07-25-2012, 08:30 AM

Phoronix: Binary Driver Blobs Aren't Yet Ready For Wayland

Aside from the Wayland/Weston 0.95 announcement, also being discussed in recent days on the Wayland development list has been support supporting the AMD Catalyst and NVIDIA Linux binary graphics drivers under Wayland...

Considering Wayland is pretty much a one-man show that hasn't seen its first release yet, all those remarks are hardly surprising.
I'm sure drivers will come quickly, especially if Wayland makes it easy to port the existing ones over. And at least a few major distros adopt Wayland, of course, but that's almost a given.

Comment

From the article:
"Please don't make it easy for "the blob to work with Wayland/Weston", and don't change anything in our stacks for that to happen. Please don't sacrifice anything in our side.
Let Nvidia adapt to Wayland/Weston and not the other way around. And if they won't, I think people will be more than happy to be on Nouveau."

Couldn't agree more with this. The problem with the blobs is that they replace a lot of the X functionality. We can wait. The Open AMD driver is usable for working with all but the latest generation; obviously same applies to the Intel driver. I never tried Nouveau, but I heard great things about it.

Comment

From the article:
I never tried Nouveau, but I heard great things about it.

Nouveau is the weakest link actually. It's slower and less feature rich than the Intel or AMD's open source driver. And for (not so) new nvidia cards (GTX 400+) you still need FUC for the card to even start working.

So nouveau is far from being "more than enough", it's "less than enough", unless you're using an older card like GT 9600 where Nouveau works reasonably good (yet obviously without a pile of important features).

But I don't want Wayland to bend over backwards to please Nvidia's binary blob cause Nvidia will have to adapt to Wayland anyway imo, so bending over backwards will only allow Nvidia to keep their blob inconsistent with Wayland for (way) longer.

Comment

But, of course, some Wayland developers think that the binary drivers can just burn in hell and everything will be fine. "Wayland is already successful in a large way. It is most certainly not contingent upon proprietary drivers supporting wayland. Nvidia will likely fix their driver, but only *AFTER* wayland is being used."

Well I hope she/he was kidding. If you have a non-intel card you don't really have a full alternative. You have an half one (radeon and nouveau), and I really hope this message can last: you must be able to use your hardware, and to use it as it is supposed to be. No things like "sorry the power management.... you know... it is an hard life". I totaly agree if you say "buy intel, don't even look at something else". Intel graphics is just a smooth expirience (I have 2, one old GMA3xxx at work and HD 4000 at home, wonderfull). This is also a strategy to support open source development. So ok binary drivers are a bug and it must be fixed, but burning them all will not make "everything fine", this is true only for people not using them. Ok maybe she/he was just kidding and I'm worrying for nothing.

Please don't make it easy for "the blob to work with Wayland/Weston", and don't change anything in our stacks for that to happen. Please don't sacrifice anything in our side.

Let Nvidia adapt to Wayland/Weston and not the other way around.

I totaly agree with this, I mean with "don't sacrifice anything in our side" and NVIDIA/AMD/others must adapt. Wayland born for Linux, not for NVIDIA/AMD. Of course I don't agree to the line "let's keep them out in any case", and I will soon explain a bit what I mean.

And if they won't, I think people will be more than happy to be on Nouveau.

Stop non-sense please, really. Try to think why someone is actually using the binary nvidia driver instead of nouveau. I was a big fan of the open source radeon driver some time ago. I tried so many time to use it. Fglrx was working better, nothing to do with that. Composite more smooth, GPU (and CPU, the fan is shared) more cool, games with better quality, battery life longer. Tell me why the hell I should use radeon if not because it is open source (which is definetly a merit, but doesn't make my hardware to work better), and fglrx has a crappy development model and slow support for new xorg (you can live with that, but it is annoying I agree). If you make a software like GNU/Linux OS display server / kernel you do that because people can use it. If you prevent people to use it.... why creating it?

Ok you can say just buy intel and you will be able to use it. But please understand intel is not good for everyone being a low end IGP in the end. There is more then just gamers that need a powerfull GPU in the chassis.

Anyway I wish my best luck to Wayland and we will see if/when it will replace Xorg.
Cheers

Comment

From the article:
"Please don't make it easy for "the blob to work with Wayland/Weston", and don't change anything in our stacks for that to happen. Please don't sacrifice anything in our side.
Let Nvidia adapt to Wayland/Weston and not the other way around. And if they won't, I think people will be more than happy to be on Nouveau."

Couldn't agree more with this. The problem with the blobs is that they replace a lot of the X functionality. We can wait. The Open AMD driver is usable for working with all but the latest generation; obviously same applies to the Intel driver. I never tried Nouveau, but I heard great things about it.

Couldn't agree less. OSS drivers suck, all of them (maybe except for intel). You can not even use them for a simple HTPC!

Unless Nvidia's and AMD's binary drivers are supported, Wayland will never be accepted by the masses. Especially now, where Linux gets more and more games and many people are looking forward to Steam on Linux. I doubt Valve will support the buggy Nouveau driver or even the worthless AMD OSS driver.

If Wayland does not support the binary blobs, it can go to hell and die - I don't care one bit. Xorg might not be perfect but it works good enough.

Comment

Couldn't agree less. OSS drivers suck, all of them (maybe except for intel). You can not even use them for a simple HTPC!

Bull. Pure and utter crap. I've got a 3-core Llano running the r600g driver on my MythTV machine in the living room at home. It records and plays HDTV at a 1920x1080 output resolution without any issues. It plays Bluray quality movies without issue. HDMI audio out works perfectly. Flash videos play fine.

I realize that you probably think that VDPAU/VAAPI is absolutely necessary for an HTPC, but you're wrong. If the CPU is up to the task, there's no need for hardware decode acceleration. Those CPUs are up to the task and then some.

Comment

Tell me why the hell I should use radeon if not because it is open source (which is definetly a merit, but doesn't make my hardware to work better), and fglrx has a crappy development model and slow support for new xorg (you can live with that, but it is annoying I agree)

I've got two reasons:

1) My work machine has dual 1080p monitors attached to a Radeon 5450 in Ubuntu x64 (currently 12.04, previously 11.10). Using Catalyst/fglrx, I could never get X to recognize the second monitor correctly. I switched to the OSS radeon driver and immediately the second monitor became usable.

2) I hate Unity, but my work machine had Ubuntu installed by the IT people at my request (I was using it at home at the time I was hired... I've since switched to Mint at home). I knew that Gnome Shell worked for me, and so I figured I'd switch to that as my window manager. Catalyst always gave me corruption/stability issues in GS (maybe they've fixed that by now, but they sure are/were taking their time). The Radeon driver works without corruption, and is rock solid for stability.

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Fglrx was working better, nothing to do with that. Composite more smooth, GPU (and CPU, the fan is shared) more cool, games with better quality, battery life longer. Tell me why the hell I should use radeon if not because it is open source (which is definetly a merit, but doesn't make my hardware to work better), and fglrx has a crappy development model and slow support for new xorg (you can live with that, but it is annoying I agree). If you make a software like GNU/Linux OS display server / kernel you do that because people can use it. If you prevent people to use it.... why creating it?

My experiences were different; that was also why I was happy the developers shared my view. I followed the development of the 'first' new ATI driver with my 4850. There I always experienced Video tearing and subpar compiz performance with the fglrx. The open-source driver fixed all that instantly. I then switched to a 6850. Again on fglrx I am currently experiencing tearing and have problems with Gnome 3 and dual monitor support. I am still on fglrx because HDMI audio doesn't work on the open source driver. This will be fixed in Kernel 3.5. Then I will switch again.

I suppose it's just different experience. I'd really just like Wayland to be as optimal as possible without bending to the closed source drivers.